Saturday, September 6, 2014

Join the Global Radiation Monitoring Network

Aquarian Bath and SolarNetOne are joining a new Global Radiation Monitoring Network, and you can too. This network was designed as an alert system for monitoring radiation level spikes. You can see that currently Europe, parts of the United States, Australia are represented. Each point on the map represents a special Geiger counter designed by Radu Motison. In the Orlando area radiation levels are low today, however we are interested particularly in monitoring our area since there was a recent spike in radiation levels in Miami.

Screen shot of map from September 6, 2014

Radu is trained as a software engineer, with a masters in Computer Science from West University of Timisoara. Electronics started as a hobby during Radu's childhood. Radu started the Global Radiation Monitoring Network to give something useful to the community. The project began with a single monitoring station for his personal use Radu explains. "Then it became clear that having multiple stations across the Globe would provide interesting insight to background radiationfluctuations and possible causes. Also in case of nuclear incidents, the distributed units would be able to pickup any raising trends and sound an alarm for seeking additional information on the event." Radu designed, built and tested his new uRADMonitor with the testing help from beta-testers who are currently on the network map.

uRadMonitors use the same detector tubes calibrated against a common reference.

I asked Radu how is his network better than existing crowd sourced radiation monitoring networks or government networks.

It's open, so everyone can see real time, unaltered data. It's using the same detectors, calibrated against a common reference. Thus, the numbers displayed on the portal are easily comparable. It's easy to use, and it only takes one look to see where the "hot" spots are. See for example the unit in the Ceska Cermna: http://www.uradmonitor.com/?open=1200000F that is almost the double of the average readings of the entire network. This is due to naturally occurring thorium and uranium under the soil where this unit is located. And uRADMonitor was able to detect this phenomenon right away. It is probably the first global network of this kind. The data collection is safe as it resides on the server side. The data transmission is protected to a certain degree using a security code.

How easy is it to set up? Can anyone do it?

It's the simple to set up your uRADMonitor Geiger counter. uRADMonitor must be mounted outside, but not directly in the sunlight. Ideally uRADMonitor should be mounted 1 meter above the ground level. The units are rainproof if mounted with the cables facing down.You will need to connect it to power, using the power adapter included with the unit, and to the home internet router using the included network cable. The device does everything by itself: gets an IP address in the local network, and starts transmitting real time measurements. On the server side the location is approximated and the new unit appears on the map, showing the radiationreadings in real time.uRAD monitors are shipping from Romania at this time, and are available either on Ebay or by emailing Radu.